In surgical procedures sutures are commonly used to close incisions and to reunite damaged tissue. Typically, the sutures are maneuvered and passed through the affected tissue and the free ends of the sutures are individually tied together by the surgeon. In most surgical incisions, the surgical site area is sufficiently exposed to permit the surgeon to access and quickly tie the suture manually with a surgical knot. However, in other surgical procedures, such as endoscopic procedures, laparoscopic procedures, arthroscopic procedures and the like, or when robotic surgical procedures occur, the suturing site is inaccessible to the surgeon's hands. As a result, the surgeon must tie each of the suture ends into a knot at location remote from the suturing site, and then manipulate suitably configured instruments for sliding the surgical knot to the suturing site of the incision. Further, surgeons may tie surgical knots intracorporeally (inside of the body) using surgical tools to tie the knot down to the tissue. Conventionally, most surgical sutures are secured with surgical knots that are somewhat cumbersome and slow to tie. As a result, knot tying is one of the more time-consuming steps in the suturing process of the surgical procedure. Also, it is noted that knots are weak points in a suture. That is to say, when a knotted suture is broken from applied tension (assuming the suture is otherwise free from imperfections), the suture will break at the knot.
In the foregoing circumstances, there remains a need for the elimination of knot tying from surgical procedures in order to significantly reduce the time duration of surgical operations. This is especially true with regard to minimally invasive surgical procedures where the tying of surgical knots within confined spaces is extremely difficult and time consuming. The present invention pertains to a helical suture anchoring device that would be applied quickly and would apply sufficient tension to the sewn sutures (including monofilament sutures) in order to restrict movement of the sutures at the surgical site.